


Under The Clock

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 1930s, AU, Chicago, Christmas, F/M, Gen, Historical, Holiday Exchange, Marshall Field's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:30:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few brief moments and a few words exchanged can be enough to make a lasting impression.  But sometimes a lot more can be said on paper, and second impressions and second chances are worth the time they take.  (Historical 1930's AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under The Clock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meggiemellark (ohmymeggs)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmymeggs/gifts).



> For **meggiemellark** , using the prompt of _Katniss/Peeta, based on the 1998 film "You've Got Mail"_
> 
> Meggie, I hope you don't mind that I took your prompt of "You've Got Mail" back to something of its original 1930's inspiration, the play "Parfumerie" by Miklós László?
> 
> Saying [meet me under the clock](http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/60805476.jpg) at the Marshall Field's store on State Street is a long-time Chicago tradition. 
> 
> Thanks to jeeno2 and starkist/shesasurvivor for such a quick beta on such short notice!

_Chicago, 1924_  
She’d gone far from Taylor Street, far from the neighborhood where anyone would see her begging. The funeral had been three weeks ago—the fever took her papa quickly, so quickly that people feared that it was the Spanish flu come back again. But the condolences and the food stopped, and her mother showed no signs of going to find work. She sat in her rocking chair and wept, and finally, Rosa’s thin and hungry face, and the sharp pangs from Catarina’s own stomach, prompted her to act.

The rag-man had given her virtually nothing for Rosa’s baby clothes, his voice gruff with apology. Times were hard for everyone in their neighborhood. So she had walked north, away from familiar voices and familiar accents, hoping that nobody would see her pawing through trash cans because she’d spent their last few coins days ago. She didn’t want any of the neighbors to know how pitiful things truly were. She was only just now turned twelve and if Mama couldn’t look after them, they might come and take her and Rosa away to the orphanage. 

“Hey, girl!” She looked up, startled, to see a blond-haired boy leaning out the door into the alley. He looked a few years older than her, or maybe it was just his size. He was bigger than most boys she knew. “You’ve been digging around here the last three days, I saw it. Here, you take this.” He held a brown paper bag out to her. The English was slow in her head, but the smell of bread, yeasty and rich, made her mouth water. 

Clutching the package to her chest, she took an involuntary step backwards as the booming voice of a woman demanded, “Peter, what’s this?” and a scowling face appeared over the boy’s shoulder, glaring at Catarina.

“Oh, just giving away some of the day-old that we can’t sell, Mom,” Peter said with a dismissive shrug. “I figured it was better than her digging through our trash cans like a gutter rat where people can see it, you know?”

Hot, angry tears filled her eyes at the condescending, dismissive tone to his voice. This smirking, well-fed American boy, with his butter-yellow hair and fair skin—what did he know about _anything_? She wanted to hit him, but to do so would mean them calling the police.

She turned and ran before the woman could change her mind and demand the bread back. No, she wouldn’t come back here again to this bakery. She wouldn’t take such smug charity and be expected to bow her head like a good, grateful little Italian girl who knew her place against her betters.

~~~~~~~~~~

_1935_  
She hated working the perfume counter, but that was where they had put her, and she was hardly in a position to argue. She was a hopeless disaster when it came to women’s fashions, as they'd found, and she could fake her way much better in perfume. Also, as co-workers went, Delly Cartwright and Johanna Maurer weren’t so bad. It helped that Johanna, with her bold and stubbornly uncompromising ways, tended to get in trouble most of anyone and draw attention away from Catarina.

“Another day at glorious Marshall Field's,” Johanna said with a smirk, leaning back against the counter. “Say, Cat, did you check out the new perfume we just got in? Latest thing from Paris—‘Cinna’. You ask me, it smells kind of like something burnt.”

“It’s nearing Christmas, Jo,” Catarina answered, spying the bottle with its design suggestive of flames. “So burned smell or not, we’ll have to sell it, won’t we?”

Johanna gave a throaty laugh. “The men don’t have a clue. They’ll get desperate. We could sell them cat piss,” unlike most other women, she refused to drop to _sotto voce_ on the vulgarity, “and lavender extract and the boys would buy it in a hurry, so long as we assure them it’s the latest thing and the little missus will adore it.”

As Johanna went on about the new perfume, exaggeratedly speculating on exactly how far they could go in outrageousness when it came to men’s ignorance of women’s things, Catarina spied a big, husky blond young man over in the men’s section. It took her a moment to place him, suspicion blooming to certainty as to her horror, he headed over after spying the two of them and he came close enough for her to see his face.

“Ladies,” he said politely, giving them both a smile. “I’m Peter Mellark, I’m new here, and I thought I’d introduce myself.”

“Johanna Maurer,” Johanna said, sticking her hand out. “What a precious little polite thing you are.”

“Catarina,” she finally said, sensing she was being prompted.

“No last name?” Peter asked, eyebrows going up in surprise. “You look familiar…”

The words came from her in a rush, remembering that day outside the bakery. “Not a last name that I care for you to know at this time, Peter Mellark.”

Johanna responded by tipping her head back and laughing. It caught the attention of Hamish Abernathy, the store’s manager, who happened to be passing by at that time. Knocked off his purposeful stalking around the store keeping things in line, he focused in on the three of them like a pouncing cat.

“Do that on your own time, Boy Scout,” Hamish advised Peter, cocking one dark eyebrow. “I ain’t paying you to flirt with our shop girls.”

“Oh, I’d pay to watch this unfold, and you would too,” Johanna answered back. Hamish gave her one of his sarcastic, edged smiles, seeming like he was openly amused by her as usual. That was unusual, considering almost everyone else seemed to actively annoy him at worst, and at best, he tolerated them gruffly. Delly kept quietly predicting that someday Johanna would get fed up with his hesitation and just ask Hamish out on a date already. _He’s been a widower for seventeen years, ever since his wife died in the flu while he was Over There,_ Johanna muttered crossly one day to Catarina as they ate their sandwiches, _which is about sixteen and a half years longer than he was actually married to her._ She hadn’t said much to that, embarrassed to realize just how little she knew about Hamish and his wife, and how little she knew about any of the people she worked with, and how little she’d been interested. 

For years her world had consisted of making do and earning money at whatever jobs she could get, and trying to keep Rosa safe. There hadn’t been room for anything else. Johanna was the closest thing she had to a friend, but even that stopped once they passed beneath the large decorative clock in its ornate scrollwork frame near and her path turned towards home. Johanna kept trying to invite Catarina out to go dancing or to a movie, and rather than embarrass herself by admitting the money was always so tight, Catarina always declined. Johanna hadn’t stopped asking yet, though.

“Yes, sir,” Peter muttered, heading back towards the menswear department, though he glanced back once. Catarina looked away, annoyed by it.

She had dinner that night with the Avellinis, because her neighbors kept inviting her over in obvious hopes that her long-standing friendship with their son Galdino would develop into more. Gale would walk her home from work sometimes too, from where he worked in the shoe department. But Gale hadn’t said anything about marrying her, staying reticent as ever. Even with this Depression making everyone put off marriage, she kept hearing from everyone that she would need to marry soon if she wanted a husband and babies. _We’re too much alike,_ she thought sometimes about Gale, but didn’t say. Not to mention the thought of children still struck her with far more fear than longing some days, remembering those hungry, helpless days when her father died. She couldn’t subject a child to that risk.

But sometimes she looked at him and thought—why not? They were so alike, they knew where they came from and the way of life they’d led before, in all its harshness. What would be so wrong about the security of that, even if some people derided it as hopelessly old-fashioned and belonging to the old country? She’d have much less to fear with him, she thought. And yet, he didn’t say anything, and so neither did she, and that was how it stayed.

Peter Mellark was unpleasant as ever over the next few weeks, always giving her those curious looks that made her feel like that starving child in an alley with him looking down his nose at her. The two of them seemed to grow sharper and sharper in their words, and Catarina could only conclude that he was over to flirt with sweet, short, shapely Delly, whom he seemed to talk to constantly.

When she went back to work the day after Thanksgiving, Johanna waved a sheet of stationary at her. “I’ve got a letter for you, _Liebchen_ ,” she sang out. “Some gorgeous young thing left this for you. Must be too shy to say it himself, so he wrote it.”

Surprised, Catarina took it, unfolding it. _I’m not good with saying something outright, so I figured I’d try writing it down. Maybe it’s the sight of you that makes me so tongue tied…_

Blushing red, astonished, she asked Johanna, “Who left this?” Galdino? Some man she didn’t even know?

“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” Johanna said, shaking her head, for once utterly solemn. “But if you want to write him back, I’ll give it to him. But promise you this—he’s not a hideous troll.”

“Good looks are his only recommendation? He could be a gangster, for all you know,” she said dryly.

“Doubt that either. He seemed like the kind of boy your mama would be happy for you to bring home.” 

Her mama had been dead three years now, Catarina thought, but she didn’t say that. Rosa would be happy, though. She kept urging Catarina to enjoy life a bit more. _You quit school early to take care of me. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that._

_I’d have quit after eighth grade anyway, you know. It wasn’t like we were going to go to high school anyway—we would never have gone to college. So what was the point of sticking around two more years when we needed the money?_

_It would have been nice for you to have some choices,_ Rosa always said with that painful, apologetic smile. But looking at her sister, her strong, healthy, lovely little sister who the boys loved and who worked in a bookshop, Catarina knew the years of taking any odd job that she could had been worth it.

 _Choices,_ she thought, fingers gripping in the paper with its neat, looping handwriting. It could be Gale. He only wrote and spoke in English, had for years, because he knew it was the only way to get ahead. And he always admitted he had a hard time putting his emotions into words. Or maybe it could be someone else entirely. She didn’t feel like the kind of person who inspired mad devotion at a glance, but she knew other former shopgirls had married men who met them here at Marshall Field's.

She looked around at the holiday decorations, and the hustle and bustle of men here to buy presents for wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers. It could be any one of these men, couldn’t it? Suddenly her life felt alive with possibility, exhilarating and frightening all at once. Every day her motivations had been the same since her father died—to make do and survive. The Depression had just tightened down her resolve, and she knew she was lucky to have such a steady job, and for all his grousing and pretense at being a curmudgeon, Hamish Abernathy paid rather well and looked after all his employees, grumbling that people had families to feed. 

But maybe there was room for more than getting by? “It’ll be a new year soon,” she said, tucking the letter into her purse. “So why not? I’ll answer him, and I’ll have the letter for you tomorrow morning.”

Sitting there that evening with the last of the stew—after scraping and scrubbing the burnt crust off the bottom and thinking Johanna was right, it did smell sort of like ‘Cinna’— and trying to find her own words was no easy task, though.

Chewing the end of the pen, filling it again with ink, she finally decided to be honest as she could. If this admirer of hers couldn’t handle who she was, then it was doomed anyway.

Defeated, she was glad Johanna didn’t read her return note the next morning. It read: _I don’t know what I said or did that caught your attention. You don’t even know me, how can you possibly admire me?_ Shaking her head, she felt like a fool.

Johanna handed over another reply the day after, while she, Johanna, and Delly hurried through a flurry of men buying more gifts. _I know that I heard you sing as you walked home, and it was so beautiful. It felt like the entire street stopped to listen. There must be something that makes you so happy. So help me to know you, Catarina._

She’d sung once or twice on the way home, on a particularly good day. Gale never joined in, insisting his own voice was poor, but he’d certainly heard her. _The last time I sang was because I knew I could buy my sister a present for her birthday._ Feeling daring, she scribbled, _Do you sing?_

His answer to that, among her other questions, was, _Very badly. I think people would pay to make me stop singing._ In spite of herself she laughed, the feeling of it warming her all through the day. 

She wrote him daily after that, and the letters got longer as they shared more and more about themselves. _My father died of influenza when I was twelve. It’s been very hard since then, especially since these last few years._

 _I can imagine. My two older brothers took over our parents’ business. They both have families to feed already, and there was no place left for me._ That ruled out Gale for certain, and yet, Catarina couldn’t be sorry for it. Whoever this was, she admitted she looked forward to his letters now with eagerness. She wouldn’t say that she could say anything to him, but somehow it became easier and easier to put more of herself on that page.

Three days before Christmas, she found herself singing again as she made dinner, and Rosa grinned at her knowingly. “So when do I get to meet him?”

“Who?” she said defensively, shooing Rosa’s cat away as it tried to hop up onto the table. She hated the rotten old fleabag, but Rosa adored it, so Catarina couldn’t get rid of it. At least it knew better than to try to sleep on _her_ bed.

“Your new boyfriend,” Rosa answered, measuring out the sugar for the Christmas cookies. “It has to be that.”

“I don’t even know who he _is_ ,” Catarina muttered with embarrassment, and she found herself pouring out the whole story to Rosa.

When she was finished, Rosa looked at her and nodded. “You should ask to meet him. Obviously he’s right there and coming to the store every single day now just hoping to talk to you—stop wasting paper and just talk to him!”

It scared her witless, but she scribbled a quick PS on her letter that night, along with her tales about the cat and Hamish and Johanna flirting again and if she had a dream, it would be to sing for a living, but she knew that was stupid and foolish and a girl had to be practical. _Will you meet me under the clock tomorrow at 5?_

She felt brazen as Johanna, but Rosa was right. She could go on and on for years writing letters to this man and keeping him at a safe distance, or she could try to seize an opportunity. If he wasn’t there tomorrow evening, she would know for sure that he wasn’t sincere. The thought of that humiliated her, knowing how she’d opened her heart to him in the last month in a way she hadn’t for anyone else.

“No reply,” Johanna said the next afternoon. “He says he’ll be waiting for you at the clock, though.” She grinned. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Cat. Good on you.”

“That’s fine,” Catarina replied anxiously, her own defensiveness and nerves prompting her to say, “so why don’t you prove something yourself and go ask Hamish to dinner?”

Johanna’s brown eyes went wide and startled. “Well,” she finally said reluctantly, “not like either Hamish or me have someone to go home to…”

This time it was Catarina who laughed, and she told herself maybe she ought to find a way to save the nickel for a movie ticket with Johanna. It would be fun. She helped clueless and awkwardly apologetic men with their last-minute purchases, her usual impatience with all of it gone. It didn’t seem to matter today that she didn’t care one whit about the difference between jasmine and lavender and that she really secretly hated perfume—she’d actually told her letter-writer that. 

Snow fell softly as she stepped outside and stuck her hands in her coat pockets. Her old blue mittens were so totally threadbare they were an utter embarrassment, and she’d told herself she couldn’t afford new gloves this winter. Who would it be? Old or young, tall or short, thin or stout? Italian like her? All she knew was that she was falling in love with him steadily, and she didn’t even know his name.

Looking underneath the clock, her heart pounding, she was startled to see Peter Mellark there, looking back at her. “It was you, all along?” she stammered, feeling again like that girl who’d expected kindness and instead been mocked. “This was all some _joke_?” She would strangle Johanna with her bare hands for this. She wanted to turn and run like she had when she was twelve years old, humiliated and ashamed.

“No!” he said, stepping forward, putting his hands on in a pleading gesture. “I…please, I finally remember where I’d seen you before I started working here.”

“Yes,” she said bitterly. “You remember your charitable day-old bread to make me stop digging in your trash cans like a gutter rat.” Even eleven years later, she couldn't forget those words.

“I had to tell Mom something or I was afraid she’d call the police on you,” he insisted. He seemed to wilt a little under her scathing, angry gaze. “Or that she’d hit me again,” he said, half to himself, and something in her hurt to hear it. Mama hadn’t been perfect, but she’d never laid a hand on either of her daughters in anger. “I’m sorry, Catarina. I was just a kid then. I was trying to protect you, and myself. I didn’t mean to hurt you, believe me.”

She’d hated that boy for how his condescending mockery had been the only thing that kept her and Rosa alive until Catarina began cleaning up at the grocery a few days later and getting a few coins and some of the leftover food at the end of the day as her pay. But she remembered Peter’s letters. He was no better off than her now—his brothers must have taken over the bakery and kicked him out to make his own way. “Do you still bake things?” she blurted out before she could help herself.

“I make cookies and the like for the neighbor kids. Not many people in my neighborhood can afford a cake,” he admitted. She wasn’t sure whether his cheeks were red with cold or embarrassment or both. “I didn’t want to say anything about baking in my letters because you seemed to hate me so much every time we talked, and…I was afraid you’d figure me out.”

She hadn’t, and his deliberate deception, even by omission, set her teeth a little on edge. “Was anything you wrote in them a lie?” she demanded.

He rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. “It wasn’t always the whole truth, but it was all true.” His voice lowered. “Especially about hearing you singing that day. And I don’t think your dream of singing is stupid at all.”

“It’s impractical,” she argued, her bone-deep practicality rearing up instinctively. “Too many people can barely afford to eat.”

“It’s maybe impractical right now, that’s not the same thing as stupid.”

She looked at him, this silly man with his talk about such impossible dreams, and she thought about how he’d brought color back into her life. _It was all true._ The old image of the bratty boy dissolved, held up against the words he’d written to her. She wasn’t sure exactly what took its place. The vague outlines of the man she’d written to was just the barest sketch, compared to the hidden realities of this real, flesh-and-blood man in front of her.

“Can I still take you out to dinner?” he asked hopefully. “I’d like to at least try to say things to you, if you’re not going to run away screaming at the sight of me.” He smiled. “I promise you that it’ll be a much better meal than day-old bread. Although I’d probably make a much better dessert than anywhere we can go.” 

She didn’t know where this would lead. But she realized in that moment that she wanted to find out. “I’m not coming back to your home for dessert, Peter Mellark,” she said. “What kind of girl do you take me for?”

He shook his head vehemently. “I swear I wasn’t expect—“ So apparently her brand of joking flirtation needed some work, and she felt the awkwardness of that misfire and not knowing what to do or what to say. He looked at her and he chuckled lowly. “Oh. _Oh_. Sorry. You were joking.”

“So maybe you don’t have me as figured out as you think,” she challenged him.

His blue eyes met hers squarely, not flinching and not apologizing. “Maybe not. But I’d still like to try and find out more.” He nodded down the street. “And right now I’d like to take you out to dinner. So shall we?”

Rosa had wanted her to have some choices. Johanna kept pestering her to let some fun into her life. It was Christmas in two more days and Christmas was the season for giving, wasn’t it? He’d given her a spark of hope, and all those years ago, he’d given her a way to stay alive. So in that moment, she decided she’d give Peter Mellark a chance. “All right,” she said. “Lead the way.”


End file.
